Comment: French rugby offers a community like no other

Just three days before their match against Scotland to determine the outcome of the 2025 Six Nations, my family and I met the entire French rugby team at their training ground near Paris. 

They signed autographs, posed for selfies, graciously let us press noses to their gym window to ogle them on barbells.

We were not members of a press pack, nor competition winners. Nor was this a corporate hospitality gig costing thousands. Our golden ticket? Being members of a tiny town rugby club from rural Nièvre. (At least, my husband and son are, having joined in September; I was tagging along for the ride/girthy legs.)

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Children from rugby schools in France are routinely invited to Marcoussis to meet their heroes and tour the facilities, so this was par for the course for the French players. 

For us on the receiving end of their signed shirts and patient smiles, it was a pinch-me moment topping off six months of unexpected munificence from our local club.

The entire day – also including return coach, lunch and a souvenir beanie hat – was paid by the club and local sponsors. 

The kids were encouraged to wear their kit, which itself had been gifted, in a personalised sports bag, at the free, three-course club Christmas lunch in December. 

This year we have also convened for complimentary galette des rois and, more recently, crepes for La Chandeleur. 

Every single training session ends with patisseries, hot chocolate beer and kir. For all this we pay annual subs of just €140 (husband and son combined).

But the nicest things have nothing to do with the club coffers. A case in point: the gazebo and bench that were erected, unsolicited, for my parents when they watched their grandson play for the first time in driving rain. 

Or at the second training session, when I was still rugby-shy and socially stiff on the sidelines. 

Then, trying to hide it all by burying my nose in a book, the towering vice-president marched towards me not with any terrifying banter, but silently proffering a Fédération Française de Rugby-branded bookmark to keep my place.

I was brought up between two rugby nations – South Africa, where rugby feels like dogma, and England, where it still doesn’t feel entirely democratic. 

For newcomers to the game, neither is ideal. Here in France it feels like something else entirely – a big, blended family. 

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The BBC recently profiled RC Massy Essonne, a team from the Paris suburbs that plays in the third tier of the French system but has acted as a springboard for scores of players to represent their country. 

Its outreach programme targets youngsters who might never have considered the sport before and, crucially, their parents. Meals are provided, minibuses offer an easy way to make training without relying on mum or dad, while designated “work from clubhouse” spaces accommodate multi-tasking parents who do accompany their kids.

“The club's success,” the article noted, “stems from a simple philosophy: they make it as easy as possible for youngsters to join and as hard as possible to leave.”

And so it has played out for us. We were only going to try it for a year but already local rugby is so intimately woven in the fabric of our life here that flaking feels unthinkable. Resistance, as the Home Nations also found out this season, is futile.